Generation Opportunity to campaign on Snapchat

Generation Opportunity is taking the Obamacare messaging wars to Snapchat, using the popular smartphone application to encourage young consumers to opt-out of the health insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act.

“Our goal is to be where young people are and to engage them in ways that they’re going to find entertaining and useful,” the group’s president Evan Feinberg told POLITICO. “One of the ways we’re getting that message across is through a first-of-its-kind social media campaign through Snapchat.”

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Snapchat is a smartphone application that allows users to send and receive pictures and videos that automatically erase after a preset time. The social media service has become very popular among young people in the past year.

Generation Opportunity’s foray into political messaging via Snapchat is part of a much broader campaign to encourage young consumers to opt-out of health insurance policies created by the ACA. The organization is perhaps best known for its “Creepy Uncle Sam” ads, part of a $750,000 media campaign targeting young consumers, which premiered in the weeks leading to the launch of the health care exchanges on Oct. 1.

Although Generation Opportunity will be using Snapchat, this new social media strategy is not an official partnership between the organization and Snapchat; Generation Opportunity will thus not be able to send mass messages to all Snapchat users. According to communications director David Pasch, their Snapchat outreach will be an “opt-in campaign,” meaning that Snapchat users will have to add ‘CreepyUncle.Sam’ to the list of users from whom they can receive messages.

“Honestly, it’s not altogether different than how we engage with other social media. Snapchat offers some new opportunities,” said Feinberg. “We’re using the medium, [but] it’s not an official campaign partnered through Snapchat.”

“Over time this will continue to be part of our arsenal,” Feinberg added.

The conservative-leaning organization has faced criticism in the past for receiving funding from the conservative Koch brothers and for the dark tone of their ads. Additionally, many have said that the ads encourage young Americans to go without health insurance altogether.

In a statement released earlier this month, Generation Opportunity responded to criticisms that it encouraged young Americans to forgo purchasing any type of health insurance.

“We have always advocated that young people make a responsible decision. And that’s to opt out of Obamacare and purchase private insurance outside of the government-run health care exchanges,” the statement read.

The new campaign was first teased by Generation Opportunity on Monday with a promotional video uploaded to the organization’s Youtube page. Fans of the hit Netflix series, “House of Cards,” will notice a strong similarity between the video and teasers for Season 2 of the political series.

“For the political junkies out there, they certainly will appreciate the reference to the next season of ‘House of Cards,’” Feinberg added.